"
"I'll send you up a boy," promised Miss Janie.
I thanked her. "And now we come to the donkey."
"Nathaniel," explained Miss Janie, in answer to her father's look of
enquiry. "We don't really want it."
"Janie," said Mr. St. Leonard in a tone of authority, "I insist upon
being honest."
"I was going to be honest," retorted Miss Janie, offended.
"My daughter Veronica has given me to understand," I said, "that if I
buy her this donkey it will be, for her, the commencement of a new
and better life. I do not attach undue importance to the bargain,
but one never knows. The influences that make for reformation in
human character are subtle and unexpected. Anyhow, it doesn't seem
right to throw a chance away. Added to which, it has occurred to me
that a donkey might be useful in the garden."
"He has lived at my expense for upwards of two years," replied St.
Leonard. "I cannot myself see any moral improvement he has brought
into my family. What effect he may have upon your children, I cannot
say. But when you talk about his being useful in a garden--"
"He draws a cart," interrupted Miss Janie.
"So long as someone walks beside him feeding him with carrots. We
tried fixing the carrot on a pole six inches beyond his reach. That
works all right in the picture: it starts this donkey kicking."
"You know yourself," he continued with growing indignation, "the very
last time your mother took him out she used up all her carrots
getting there, with the result that he and the cart had to be hauled
home behind a trolley.
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